The white menace!
Tomorrow will be the end of an era… and the beginning. At the moment, I’m just brimming with excitement. Why? Well, friends, let me tell you.
I just got a friendly e-mail from Amazon.com to let me know that my recent order has shipped. Now, when I placed my order barely 3 days ago, Amazon listed the ship-time as 1-2 weeks. Weeks? Yes, weeks. But I placed the order anyway, because it would save me $170+ over buying… “it”… in the local store.
Now, before I tell you what “it” is, I’m going to gush about Amazon Prime. It’s an added-value “club” at Amazon, where members get free 2nd-day shipping or $3.99 next-day shipping. I signed up for the free trial when they first introduced the program, and then I paid the $79/year to continue my membership.
So now I don’t have to combine purchases to reach that “eligible for free shipping” threshold. I simply order whatever I want, whenever I want it, and I don’t have to find some DVD for $5.99 to round out my order and save on shipping. These days, I just order the 50-pack of slimline CD/DVD cases, or the red Henckels kitchen sheers (for my lovely wife), or… whatever. Needless to say, I get my value out of Amazon Prime.
But I’ve probably milked the “it” mystique for all it’s worth, so I’ll tell you why I’m so excited.
Deleted Scenes?
Dan (a reader) asked about deleted scenes, and I started to answer his comment with one of my own. But when I re-read my reply, I realized that I wasn’t answering Dan personally. Instead, I was writing a general answer to all the people who ask about the subject. To paraphrase Dan’s question:
Have you ever thought about keeping your deleted scenes and posting them on the web site after you publish the story?
It’s a good question, and I didn’t want to sound like I was landing on Dan like a ton of bricks. But I have some strong feelings about publishing deleted scenes, and I thought I’d share them as a blog post.
So, without further ado, my answer:
Slash and burn.
I had a good day (and I’m still going). Actually, I’ve had a good week. I did a lot of writing earlier in the week—about 4,000 words total—but I didn’t have time to post anything to the blog.
I really do have a finite number of words in me some days, and it’s hard to take time to write non-story stuff here. But the blog really does let people know what I’m doing. And while most of you realize how hard I work on my stories, it never hurts to show things from the inside. My two cents, at least.
So, about today…
Nereids, Ch 1 Posted!
Nereids, the long-awaited prequel to Summer Camp, is now available, exclusively on Ruthie’s Club.
Here’s the teaser:
Jack MacLean is happy with married life, but it’s the Swinging Sixties and he wants more. His wife does too, and they have their eye on her new friend, Beth Hughes. But Jack and Beth’s husband will soon be fighting a war in the skies over Vietnam. When they return, everything will change.
For those of you who are Ruthie’s members already, here’s a direct link to Chapter 1.
For everyone else, membership is $9.95 for a 7-day trial, or $17.95 per month. The free tour includes several stories, along with one of my best (IMO, at least), “Betsy Gets Lucky.” (All of the stories on RC are illustrated, so the free tour is worth it, if only to see the amazing Garv illustration for “Betsy.”)
Joining Ruthie’s Club is quick, easy, and secure (they use one of the major credit-card billing companies, Verotel).
Early reviews for Nereids are very good, but you’ll have to read for yourself to find out.
I hope you enjoy it, and thanks for reading.
- Nick
I’m in the mood for a melody…
I’m in the writing mood. (So what am I doing writing in my blog? Keep reading.)
I just spent the last three hours doing a complete edit on Nereids, Ch12. I pared it down to 10,822 words, but it’s already larger than most of the previous chapters. I still have one major scene to write (the climax… ;-), as well as a short epilogue. I cut out quite a bit, though—about 1,000 words.
I know how the final scene is going to go—now I need to transition to it. Believe it or not, that’s harder than it sounds. The story needs to flow smoothly, with the passage of time evident but not belabored. It takes a bit of creativity to manage (natch). Ask a writer… most will agree.
Always know where your towel is.
Today was another good day. I had lots of stuff to do at work—a project going to production, with a new process in place—but most everything went well. While the computers were processing the new project, and while the printers were pumping out reams of paper (part of my job involves publishing, so I do big print jobs), I had time to work on Nereids.
I did an entire edit of Ch11 and sent it out to the reality team. They’ll chew on it for a few days and spit out the pieces when they’re done. They really don’t spit much out, but when they do, I take them seriously.
After Ch11, I revised Ch5 based on my editor’s comments. He had two good suggestions, which required a bit of rewriting. Well, not so much rewriting as shifting something later in time and smoothing the transitions. I think it works quite a bit better now. So, thanks, Mr. Editor.
I also spent a lot of time re-reading Ch5. It’s one of my favorite chapters, even though it has little or no sex. It’s an action-packed chapter, with lots of emotion. It also defines David Hughes’s character in many ways. So I enjoy reading it. To me, that’s the sign of good writing (if I do say so myself). In general, I enjoy re-reading most of my writing. Most is the key word, however. Some of it is okay… good enough. But some of it—like Ch5—I could read over and over. I don’t know why. If I did, I’d put that into all of my writing. But I don’t know, so I can’t.
Anyway, that’s the editing portion of tonight’s post.
Back on the chain gang…
Well, my last prediction was accurate: I didn’t have much time to write on July 4th. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much time since then, either. Like most everyone after the long holiday weekend, I spent several days playing catch-up at work.
We also had an addition to the family—our oldest daughter gave birth on July 5th, to a beautiful baby girl. So we had lots of family things to do last week and over the weekend. For those of you who don’t know, I have four step-children (three girls and a boy). And even though I’m a fairly young guy, I have five grandchildren, all under 2½. They’re fun, but I’m also glad that we can send them home after we babysit.
Anyway, the long and the short of it, I haven’t had much free time in the past week. I did get lots of little things done, but nothing major. My honey-do list is still as long as my arm. My own To Do list is about as long—now takes up two Post-It notes. But I digress…
It’s déjà vu all over again.
Okay, so I slept in this morning. I had the day off, but my wife had to work, so I didn’t have anyone asking me about my completely neglected honey-do list. Well, I puttered around the downstairs office, reading e-mail, checking the news, etc. Then I decided to get cleaned up (shower, shave, etc.) so I could eat with my wife when she came home for lunch. We still had sandwich leftovers, so I fixed a ham, salami, pepperoni, and provolone sandwich. (Sans tomato this time, since I ate the last slices yesterday.)
Anyway, after my lovely wife headed back to work, I came downstairs to work on Nereids, Ch12. But then I got derailed. I guess I wasn’t really in the mood to write, since I checked the latest Digg headlines. For those of you who don’t know the site, Digg is like crack for techies—we literally can’t look at just one article header. And I got sucked in, Big Time ™.
I love it when a plan comes together.
I rolled out of bed this morning and threw on a polo and a pair of shorts. I wanted to do some writing before I started my weekend honey-do list. So I bounded down to my office and slid into my chair. Then I turned off my e-mail program and closed my browser—I didn’t want any distractions. I planned to delete the last two scenes I wrote (I didn’t like the direction they were going, since it would take a lot of words to get back to where I needed to be). Then, I had a good idea of how to pick up and move the storyline. I spent 30-45 minutes re-editing to get up to speed, and then…
The phone rang.
Caller ID showed an out-of-state number. Years ago, I put my phone numbers on the Direct Marketing Association’s “do not call” list. (I also put my address on the “do not junk mail” list.) I actually had to send snail-mail letters to do it, too. Those were the days before the government lists, when most reputable mass-marketers used the DMA and their “do not” lists. Consequently, I rarely get junk mail, and I very, very rarely get telemarketer calls. But I digress…